It
has been a pleasure to have spent the last few months working with David
McReynolds. One of the positive benefits of green political campaigns is
getting to know better the individuals you are supporting. As I have driven
David around the state the last few weeks I have been able to get my own
McReynolds history lesson.

As David is fond of telling
the audience at campaign stops -- often waking me from my restful repose to
add a few words of balance -- we disagree on the issue of the 2004
Presidential election and the lesser-of-two-evils. While David may be tired
of hearing that the lesser-of-two-evils is still evil, it unfortunately is
still true

And there is little that
Kerry offers that I would view as reflective of the green vision of the
world.

His environmental record,
which draws high marks from the big 10 DC-based national groups, is
reflective of the agenda of trying to reduce the level of pollution, not of
creating a sustainable environmental-economic system that does not use up
our planet's resources faster than we can replace him. And I hear no urgent
call from him to end human impact on global warming.

David has agreed that he
will read the
Avocado Declaration by Peter Camejo that provides an historical overview
of the similarity of the two major parties over the last 130 years.
Unfortunately, David has not had time to read it before the election.

David does trot out the
bogeyman of the Supreme Court nominations. I do remind him that Clinton's
appointments to the federal bench were generally similar in political and
judicial philosophy to those of Reagan and Bush. The one main difference
being on economic issues, in which Clinton's judicial appointments were more
conservative.

I think judicial
appointments are reflective of the different orientation of the two major
parties. Democrats tend to appoint judges, especially Supreme Court judges,
that they believe will be acceptable to the most reactionary members of the
Republican Senate (e.g, for decades, Strom Thurmond). The Republicans tend
to nominate judges that are more reflective of their own beliefs. I do
remind David that bad Supreme Court nominees - and indeed, any bad policies
at all - can not be approved without Democratic agreement, since 60 votes
are needed to break a filibuster in the Senate and that the bad ones were
all approved with Democratic votes.

(And if it was pro-life,
boy would I be annoyed about how the Republicans have crassly manipulated
this issue for the last twenty years to get my vote but have done so little
to reverse it despite having swept to power nationally.)

I think we also see the
difference on the issue of impeachment. The Republicans gleefully welcomed
the opportunity to impeach Clinton over lying about oral sex. The Democrats
refused to push impeachment when Bush lied about the invasion of Iraq; they
apparently didn't want to look too partisan or extreme. Of course, the
national Democratic party leadership supports war and the
military-industrial complex, so they wouldn't want to be seen as opposing
war.

I always cite an op ed by
David Brower that appeared in my local corporate paper in 1996. Brower is
considered by many the grandfather of the environmental movement. Brower, in
endorsing Nader, pointed out that
Clinton and Gore
in their first four years had managed to do more damage to the environment
(e.g., NAFTA, salvage timber ride, Everglades destruction) than Reagan and
Bush had managed to inflict in twelve. Now Reagan and Bush wanted to do more
damage. Clinton and Gore did it more to reward their corporate campaign
contributors. The other big difference was the while the big national
environmental groups used Reagan and Watts to drive their direct mail
fundraising operations, they were unwilling to attack the worse policies of
Clinton due to the desire not to "reduce their access" to the Clinton
cocktail parties.

In case you missed it, the
Democrats long ago stopped talking about the poor (read, people of color) as
a core constituency. As someone who has spent thirty years as an
anti-poverty organizer, I am quite aware -- as are our members -- that we
are no longer part of the democratic call to arms. We now have Working
Families instead (and the Dems don't define raising children as work).
Clinton of course ended welfare as we know it -- getting rid of the
principal child anti-poverty New Deal program.
Income inequality has increased in our country regardless of whether a
Democrat or Republican is President. It was actually very striking how much
even Jesse Jackson dropped the poor in his second run for president.

Yes, it it is true that
many important constituencies and groups reside in the Democratic Party.
That is perhaps the biggest difference within the two parties - who they
make a show of consulting before deciding to do what their corporate backers
want. But the corporate backers always win - the difference mainly being
what crumbs they dispense to their alleged followers.

There is a course also some
difference between the two parties on foreign policy. The Republicans
believe that America has the right to unilaterally use our economic and
military power to impose their vision of a corporate American global empire.
The Democrats believe that we should consult Europe and Japan in
implementing the corporate American global empire.

The differences are not
worth my vote.

Mark Dunlea is a cofounder and former chair of the Green Party of
New York State. He is the author of Madame President: The Unauthorized
Biography of the First Green Party President (http://nys.greens.org/rachel)

The Green Party is at a
crossroads. The 2004 elections place before us a clear and unavoidable
choice. On one side, we can continue on the path of political independence,
building a party of, by and for the people by running our own campaign for
President of the United States. The other choice is the well-trodden path of
lesser-evil politics, sacrificing our own voice and independence to support
whoever the Democrats nominate in order, we are told, to defeat Bush.

The difference is not over
whether to "defeat Bush" - understanding that to mean the program of
corporate globalization and the wars and trampling of the Constitution that
come with it - but rather how to do it. We do not believe it is possible to
defeat the "greater" evil by supporting a shamefaced version of the same
evil. We believe it is precisely by openly and sharply confronting the two
major parties that the policies of the corporate interests these parties
represent can be set back and defeated.

ORIGINS
OF THE PRESENT TWO-PARTY SYSTEM

History shows that the
Democrats and Republicans are not two counterpoised forces, but rather
complementary halves of a single two-party system: "one animal with two
heads that feed from the same trough," as Chicano leader Rodolfo "Corky"
Gonzalez explained.

Since the Civil War a
peculiar two-party political system has dominated the United States. Prior
to the Civil War a two-party system existed which reflected opposing
economic platforms. Since the Civil War a shift occurred. A two-party system
remained in place but no longer had differing economic orientation. Since
the Civil War the two parties show differences in their image, role, social
base and some policies but in the last analysis, they both support
essentially similar economic platforms.

This development can be
clearly dated to the split in the Republican Party of 1872 where one wing
merged with the "New Departure" Democrats that had already shifted towards
the Republican platform, which was pro-finance and industrial business.
Prior to the Civil War, the Democratic Party, controlled by the slaveocracy,
favored agricultural business interests and developed an alliance with small
farmers in conflict with industrial and some commercial interests. That
division ended with the Civil War. Both parties supported financial and
industrial business as the core of their programmatic outlook.

For over 130 years the two
major parties have been extremely effective in preventing the emergence of
any mass political formations that could challenge their political monopoly.
Most attempts to build political alternatives have been efforts to represent
the interests of the average person, the working people. These efforts have
been unable to develop. Both major parties have been dominated by moneyed
interests and today reflect the historic period of corporate rule.

In this sense United States
history has been different from that of any other advanced industrial
nation. In all other countries multi-party systems have appeared and to one
degree or another these countries have more democratic electoral laws and
better political representation. In most other countries, there exist
political parties ostensibly based on or promoting the interest of
non-corporate sectors such as working people.

STRUGGLES
FOR DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

In spite of this
pro-corporate political monopoly, mass struggles for social progress,
struggles to expand democracy and civil rights have periodically exploded
throughout United States history.

Every major gain in our
history, even pre-Civil War struggles --such as the battles for the Bill of
Rights, to end slavery, and to establish free public education-- as well as
those after the Civil War have been the product of direct action by
movements independent of the two major parties and in opposition to them.

Since the Civil War,
without exception, the Democratic Party has opposed all mass struggles for
democracy and social justice. These include the struggle for ballot reform,
for the right of African Americans to vote and against American apartheid
("Jim Crow"), for the right to form unions, for the right of women to vote,
against the war in Vietnam, the struggle to make lynching illegal, the fight
against the death penalty, the struggle for universal health care, the fight
for gay and lesbian rights, and endless others. Many of these struggles were
initiated by or helped by the existence of small third parties.

DIVISION
OF WORK

When social justice, peace
or civil rights movements become massive in scale, and threaten to become
uncontrollable and begin to win over large numbers of people, the Democratic
Party begins to shift and presents itself as a supposed ally. Its goal is
always to co-opt the movement, demobilize its forces and block its
development into an alternative, independent political force.

The Republican Party has
historically acted as the open advocate for a platform which benefits the
rule of wealth and corporate domination. They argue ideologically for
policies benefiting the corporate rulers. The Republicans seek to convince
the middle classes and labor to support the rule of the wealthy with the
argument that "What's good for General Motors is good for the country," that
what benefits corporations is also going to benefit regular people.

The Democratic Party is
different. They act as a "broker" negotiating and selling influence among
broad layers of the people to support the objectives of corporate rule. The
Democratic Party's core group of elected officials is rooted in careerists
seeking self-promotion by offering to the corporate rulers their ability to
control and deliver mass support. And to the people they offer some
concessions, modifications on the platform of the Republican Party. One
important value of the Democratic Party to the corporate world is that it
makes the Republican Party possible through the maintenance of the stability
that is essential for "business as usual." It does this by preventing a
genuine mass opposition from developing. Together the two parties offer one
of the best frameworks possible with which to rule a people that otherwise
would begin to move society towards the rule of the people (i.e. democracy).

An example of this process
is our minimum-wage laws. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage has been
gradually declining for years. Every now and then the Democrats pass a small
upward adjustment that allows the downward trend to continue, but gives the
appearance that they are on the side of the poor.

(Note: In NY, the Governor
has the power to raise the minimum wage without legislative approval. The
great liberal, Mario Cuomo, refused to do it for his twelve years in office.